GGF#51: The geek bond that gamers share

Wed, 1 July 2009 10:00 am

[Gamer Girl Friday]

You can call this a really late issue, or you can call it a really early issue.

I won’t be publishing GGF this Friday because I’ll be in Kuching, Land of the Kolomee. It’s a media sponsored trip wherein I shall be expected to race up and down a mountain for a distance of 10 km, or until I keel over from leech attacks, whichever comes first.

Somewhere deep inside a subterranean secret hideout, I believe, is a conspiracy bubbling to turn Gamer Girl Friday into Sporty Spice Saturday.

Sheylara

To borrow Unker Kell’s catchphrase, SHOCKING!

But that’s the story of my life in recent times. I’ve been so busy being such an annoying health puss (minus the past one week of being sick with flu) that I haven’t had time to play games, much.

That will change after I get back from Kuching plus a consecutive weekend of debauchery in a Malaysian durian farm.

In the meantime, go ahead and play tons of games on my behalf while I battle with leeches and such in strange, foreign lands.

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Table of Contents

  1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
  2. Time Wasters by Swordplay
  3. Virtua Tennis 2009
  4. Highlights from Video Games Live
  5. Very Hot! PSP
  6. Results of last week’s contest
  7. Win an Xbox 360 laser pointer LED keyring!!

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

This is going to be a really short thingy because I only managed to play the game for half an hour or thereabouts.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

After watching the movie, I was compelled to finally unwrap my game and pop it into my Xbox 360.

The movie is as crap as reviews have made it out to be, but I actually did enjoy many parts of it, mostly the inane comic moments that contribute nothing to the movie, plotwise.

Anyway, word of advice, don’t watch the movie. Just play the game. Unless you’re willing to pay 10 bucks to watch Megan Fox pout her lips too many times, in which case, go for it.

Megan Fox

Now, the game.

I instantly liked it because it’s very newbie friendly.

There is a detailed tutorial that teaches you how to do everything, from the simplest task like moving about, to the most complicated madness like doing a mid-air transform-jump-shoot-cook-an-omelette combo.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Of course, by the time I was done with the tutorial, I had forgotten 80% of the things I was taught, so I replayed it, and got a better score, unlocked an achievement, plus retained an extra 20% of the lesson.

The game starts off pretty cool. There’s a war between the Decepticons and the Autobots, obviously. You get to switch back and forth between both campaigns at will. You do missions to unlock more missions that further the plot, and you can replay missions.

You’ll probably want to replay missions to get better medals and scores in order to unlock more stuff.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

My first mission was quite disastrous, although I managed to complete it without dying. I was an Autobot sent to singlehandedly destroy all Decepticons in the area.

But the damned things kept running away from me. It was a chore chasing them all over the place, especially when the mission took place in skyscraperville. They kept hiding behind and on top of buildings.

So you start climbing buildings in pursuit, and when you finally reach the top, they wiggle their bums at you and jump off.

GRRRR!

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

But, generally, the game is fun. To maximise the fun factor, you need to not suck at it.

Transforming between robot and vehicle is fun. It’s instantaneous. It’s awesome. It’s like getting a free speed buff for travel any time you want. And you can even shoot at enemies while being in vehicle mode, but that’s one of those things I’ve forgotten how to do.

Also, different bots each have a different special power, although I keep forgetting to use those.

There’s also this flying bot whose name I can’t remember which is really fun. It took me about 5 minutes of practice in the tutorial to get the hang of flying without crashing into buildings.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I think multiplayer for this game will kick ass.

That is, I am going to get my ass kicked.

Although I haven’t tried it, I think it will be a lot more fun than the usual FPS/TPS. Since every bot has a unique skill (sniper, healer, attacker, etc), teamwork becomes crucial and there’s a lot of potential for strategic play.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Hmm, it turns out that my really short thingy isn’t so short after all.

Well, that’s it! No more! Go find out the rest yourself!

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Time Wasters by Swordplay

Swordplay is my pesky li’l bro who spends all his time playing time-wasting games. To make him a little bit more useful, I’m sitting on him and making him recommend one fun and simple web-based game each week.

This week’s game: Upgrade Complete

Upgrade Complete

Don’t be fooled by the 8-bit graphic. There is more to this game beneath this embarrassing exterior.

Once in a while, a game comes along which is so atrocious and yet so clever that you’re secretly LOLing to yourself even as you curse it for existing.

The aim of this game is to earn money through shooting ships, after which you buy upgrades for just about everything, from graphics to music to the ability to even load the game in the first place.

Upgrade Complete

So, yes, the graphics get better.

It’s dumb but it’s also addictive and hilarious.

I won’t show you more pictures because the fun is in upgrading and seeing what you get next.

It will take you 30 minutes or less to complete the entire game. Highly recommended.

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Virtua Tennis 2009

As sporty as I have on occasion proven to be, I don’t like sports games.

That’s because playing sports games makes me want to throw my controller down and rush out to do the sport myself. I have this restless bone in me which outrightly rejects the concept of vicarious living and demands to do everything first-hand.

It’s the same reason why I don’t watch sports on TV or read sports news. I’d rather do it myself. So, when I received a review copy of Virtua Tennis 2009 some time back, I kinda let it sit around.

Virtua Tennis 2009

But I had to play it eventually. A game’s a game. Even a sports game is better than no game.

So I popped the disc in and I was immediately very excited. The starting screens and music brought me back to my arcade heydays when I would spend inordinate amounts of time and money being an arcade delinquent and collecting a crowd watch me play.

After reliving that embarrassing scenario, I was taken to a character creation screen. That was, to me, probably the best part of the game.

Virtua Tennis 2009

Hey, I like making characters, so? The level of customisation is amazing. You get to tweak every single feature, down to the angle of your ears. There is even pink hair!

Virtua Tennis 2009

You can also customise your playing posture.

Virtua Tennis 2009

I mean, that’s kind of cool for people who appreciate frills like that and are not really into the game for the tennis part of it. (Me.)

I’ve never actually played real-life tennis. The only thing I know about the sport is that women get to wear cute skirts when they play it.

So, once I got started on the actual gameplay—I opted for Career Mode—I floundered horribly.

In Career Mode, you do one thing per week. You could learn new stuff from your coach, or practise ball with an NPC friend, or take part in a tournament if there is one scheduled that week, or play a mini game to improve your skills.

Virtua Tennis 2009

My tennis coach is very irritating.

He would send me off to the court with a vague instruction, and then expect me to know exactly what to do.

“Hit a drop shot,” he would say, “Get in place early to make sure you get it right.”

Virtua Tennis 2009

Well, what the heck is a drop shot, how does it look like, and what is the right place to get into early?

He wouldn’t say.

I spent 20 minutes trying to do a drop shot—and I think I might have gotten one by accident—before I gave up on practice missions forever.

This game is obviously not for tennis noobs.

But it is quite fun when you manage to trick your opponent into running the wrong direction for the ball, even if it’s by accident.

Virtua Tennis 2009

The graphics is nice and the controls responsive. If you’re the sort who likes to play sports via a controller in hand, the gameplay is satisfying and realistic enough.

But I got bored very quickly because I’m just playing match after match to earn money to buy nice tennis outfits.

Fortunately, the Goonfather came home at this point of time. He had played and completed Virtua Tennis 3 (the predecessor) and had loved it.

So I threw the controller to him and he made a lot of money for me to go shopping.

Virtua Tennis 2009

Happy!

Virtua Tennis 2009 is available on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PC.

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Highlights from Video Games Live

I took tons of videos at Video Games Live Singapore but when I got home, I realised that I didn’t want to upload tons of videos. It’s very tiring and time consuming. Plus, most of the stuff you can already find on YouTube, anyway.

Video Games Live Singapore

So, I will show you screenshots of my favourite moments, instead.

The show started off with a simple poem on the projection screen.

Video Games Live Singapore

Video Games Live Singapore

It’s hilarious, yet heartwarming. You can’t truly appreciate the geek bond that gamers share unless you’re a gamer yourself.

And then, there was the live Pac-Man video, where you see some dude dressed in a Pac-Man suit running away from dudes wearing ghost suits, in the middle of the day in busy streets.

Video Games Live Singapore

So creative and fun! I wish I could have been one of the actors in the video.

Shortly after, a member of the audience was invited up to play Space Invaders on the stage. He was given two minutes to kill all the invaders, to win a kickass arcade machine that has 5,000 games in it.

Video Games Live Singapore

The catch was that he had to wear a motion sensor suit and move his spaceship using his body. He was also given a button to press to shoot.

Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to win the prize. He was so close, too, with only eight invaders left to incinerate.

Diablo 3
music!

Video Games Live Singapore

It was mentioned at the show that the game will take another two or three years to be released. Happy waiting, Diablo fans.

Mostly, the show just featured popular game music after popular game music. Kingdom Hearts, World of Warcraft, Halo, Mario Bros, Metal Gear Solid, to name just a few.

Singapore had the honour of witnessing a new VGL addition — a live saxophone performance by Norihiko Hibino, the music composer of Metal Gear Solid.

Video Games Live Singapore

Famous video game pianist Martin Leung played Mario blindfolded. He is one of the main highlights for all VGL shows.

Video Games Live Singapore

Martin is super super super awesome.

In fact, he was at Funan the day before, for a preview performance, so that means I got to watch him twice! Wheee!

Video Games Live Singapore

There was a Guitar Hero tournament which finals was held on the VGL stage as part of the show.

The two guys were good, playing Sweet Emotion on expert mode and getting 95% and 94% respectively. The final scores were so close that I felt really bad for the guy who lost by a hangnail.

Video Games Live Singapore

Oh, I forgot the cosplay competition. It happened around the beginning.

Video Games Live Singapore

There was a Patapon, which received the most enthusiatic applause and catcalls, so he won. LOL!

Video Games Live Singapore

My absolute favourite moment of the night came at the end of the show. Co-creator and host of Video Games Live Tommy Tallarico got everyone to whip out their cell phones, PDAs and DSes and wave them around in lieu of glow sticks.

It was simply amazing! There was that geek bond I mentioned, coming to the fore as our geek toys lit up the Singapore Indoor Stadium like stars in a black sky.

Video Games Live Singapore

Suddenly, Tommy said, “That guy’s got a laptop up there, what the hell?” and everyone laughed like crazy.

I quickly turned around with my camera and managed to get the laptop on tape. Haha.

Video Games Live Singapore

A great way to end the show!

If VGL were ever to come to Singapore again, try not to miss it!

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Very Hot! PSP

Sony is heating up the the Korean market with its latest PSP bundle sale, which spawned this “Very hot!” ad.

Sony PSP ad

Read the story here.

I like the giant PSP in this ad. What about you?

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Results of last week’s contest

Sorry, I know you guys have waited long for the results of this contest to be announced.

Prototype mouse mat!

Prototype mouse pad

Well, here it is!

Mr Randomiser hath spoken and TaintedCross† be the winner!

Congratulations, ye with the slightly scary name.

If you see this message, please e-mail me to claim your prize. If not, I’ll e-mail you after a while. But only if I remember to.

I have too many things to remember, these days!

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Win an Xbox 360 laser pointer LED keyring!!

Oh, look! I found another one of these in my loot bag!

Xbox 360 laser pointer LED keyring

Which reminds me that I still owe RN1209 one because I always forget to bring it out when I meet him and he never reminds me so I never remember.

So, who wants to be added to my list of prize winners who never get their prizes because I keep forgetting to bring them out or mail them?

(It’s not a very big list, mind you. I generally, eventually, get the prizes to where they belong.)

So. If you want to win this keyring, please answer this question:

“Who do you want to laser point at and why?”

Best answer wins.

Closing date is July 9, 2009, 11:59 pm.

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Hmm. Now my blog is as long as a toilet roll again.

[Gamer Girl Friday]

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Sheylara and her Samsung Jet

Tue, 30 June 2009 10:00 am

Advertorial

Once upon a time, a girl received a mysterious package in the mail.

Mysterious Package

She opened the package and saw a glossy black thing of beauty glowing at her.

Samsung Jet

It was a phone!

And because the girl always kept up to date on trends, she knew instantly that it was a Samsung Jet!

How more wonderful could life get?

Sheylara

Like many other girls, this girl loved brand new shiny things, so she picked it up with delight and turned it on.

Samsung Jet

The pretty, bright colours of the 3.1″ revolutionary AMOLED screen took her breath away and she was instantly in love.

Sheylara

Fascinated by the rich colours and sharp resolution, she sat there and scrolled through the three default widget screens endlessly to admire the wallpapers, using her thumb on the touchscreen.

She loved that there were three widget screens to hold tons of cool widgets. Widgets are a girl’s best friend! (Well, almost.)

Samsung Jet

She could drag and drop selected widgets onto any of the screens and arrange them to her liking for fast access to her favourite applications!

Samsung Jet

Facebook! YouTube! Google! Photo album! Birthday reminders! Etc and etc and etc!!

It was so insanely fun and convenient that the girl spent, like, half an hour dragging and dropping widgets, all the while still admiring the vibrant display colour of the Samsung Jet.

Samsung Jet

Once she was done, she discovered the menu screens, which held icons for more serious smartphone users.

Samsung Jet

Although the screen background was black and serious here, unlike the widget screen, the icons jumped out with their pretty colours, and she thought maybe this would be nice for the times when she needed to get serious and work on stuff that needed to be, well, worked on.

Sheylara

She could, for instance, access the Internet from here, edit videos, organise tasks, calculate or convert stuff, listen to the radio, play games…

Sheylara

Oops! Well, even serious can be fun!

And, of course, she could make phone calls. Duh. It was a phone, after all, even if it was a “Smarter than Smartphone” phone.

She loved playing with the Samsung Jet and discovering its cool features. And it was so easy to figure out that she didn’t even need to look at a manual.

Sheylara

Also, with an 800MHz application processor, which, in layman’s terms, means very very fast, working on the phone was a breeze. Applications opened fast and worked smoothly. There was no lag, which was very important for a busy girl!

Then, she discovered the buttons on the side of the phone.

Like, there were the volume buttons on the left, and a lock button and a camera button on the right.

And then, there was the cube button!

Samsung Jet

Pressing this button produced a cute little cube on the screen and it was fun because she could roll the cube around on the screen with either her thumb or her fingernails.

The cube was a media gateway, which was just perfect for a media-loving girl!

Samsung Jet

Each face of the cube gave her access to a different media application: Photos, music, videos, radio, games and the Internet!

The girl was so spoilt for choice!

Happily, she ran to show off the phone to her boyfriend, who she was sure would be very impressed.

She said, “Ta dah!!”

Sheylara

And he said, “WOW!! A SAMSUNG JET!!!”

She said, “Yah! It’s mine!!”

And he said, “Lemme see, lemme see!”

So the girl handed the phone over and the boyfriend said, “Waaaaaaaaaah! I like! It’s mine now!”

The girl said, “How can like that?!”

And the boy said, “I trade you my Samsung Omnia!”

Samsung Omnia

And before the girl could say or do anything else, the naughty boy kissed the girl on the cheeks, said, “Love ya!” and ran off to work with her Samsung Jet!

Boyfriends could be so annoying!

Sheylara

Well, since her phone got hijacked and the girl can’t talk about it anymore, she says you can find out tons more cool stuff about it at the Samsung Jet website.

Or, better yet, try out the phone yourself at the Samsung flagship store at VivoCity!

Sheylara

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My photo tribute to Michael Jackson

Mon, 29 June 2009 2:47 pm

I’m not a Michael Jackson fan but we have to talk about him in Star Blog this week.

We were also tasked to take photos of ourselves in “MJ moments” so I decided to have some fun with it.

Sheylara

I had planned to meet my friends at East Coast Park for skating/cycling on Saturday night, so I latched upon the brilliant idea of doing a photo shoot on my skates.

It was nuts.

You can’t imagine how unbelievably tough it is to make convincing Michael Jackson poses on too-tight skates, especially if the ground is not totally flat.

Sheylara

Imagine me trying to hold this pose while my body involuntarily starts to roll forward slowly because the ground is ever-so-slightly angled and my friends around me are screeching with laughter while I strain and angle my body and feet to control the rolling and, all the while, my assigned photographer is not photographing me because he’s having fun making MJ poses himself.

My toes totally died from loss of blood by the end of the shoot.

But it was, on the whole, rather fun. And I’m sure I provided some comic entertainment to many lucky passers-by that night.

Thanks to Unker Kell for being my photographer and enduring the scoldings by Minou and me for constantly being distracted and not doing your job properly.

Thanks to Minou for being my “dance” director.

Sorry you guys didn’t get to cycle much because we spent most of the night doing this shoot.

Club Morte

See the rest of the photos here!

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Results of LG GD900 Crystal Caption Contest

Sun, 28 June 2009 10:34 am

Many thanks to everyone who participated in the Sheylara.com LG GD900 Crystal Caption Contest! The response was overwhelming and the LG team had a really hard time picking the winner!

But a winner has to be picked and LG has made a decision, so… RESULTS coming up next!

Who is the winner of this beautiful LG GD900 Crystal?

LG GD900 Crystal

First, a recap of the contest…

Participants were asked to provide a caption for this picture:

Sheylara and LG GD900 Crystal

And the winning caption is…

“See the world thru LG; Everything looks better.”

Congratulations to Kristy Teo! You win!!!!!!!

*streamers and party noisemakers and champagne and angel harps playing We are the Champions!*

LG will be contacting you soon about collecting your prize.

Well done and thank you for your participation!

Thank you everyone again. It has been fun!

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Laughing baby has 86 million views

Fri, 26 June 2009 9:30 pm

This baby is seriously awesome.

NSFW because it will make you LOL. But then, the work week is over, so it’s okay to watch.

Enjoy!

By the way, I scheduled Gamer Girl Friday for tomorrow because I was supposed to post an advertorial today but I think it got delayed so, well, GGF will come out, uh, whenever. =P

In the meantime, I’m having a lot of fun in Plurk these days, with more friends joining me. Even the Goonfather has joined and gotten addicted. Haha.

Join us in Plurkland for silly chats!

Oh yah.

Please remember to vote for me today. =P

Vote Sheylara

Choose “Best Lifestyle Blog” and Vote my picture! =)

And leave a comment here for me!

Many thanks and have a great weekend!!

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Stupid Goonfather!

Thu, 25 June 2009 2:00 pm

I almost walked face-first into a daddy longlegs yesterday.

It was hanging at face height on the way to my door, like a booby trap.

Daddy Longlegs

Because it’s brownish-yellow and thin, and my room’s light is yellow, I couldn’t see it until I was almost kissing it.

Shocked, I jumped back but managed to hold in a shriek. I rushed to my computer and started typing to the Goonfather.

MSN

“There’s a daddy longlegs hanging by a thread in front of my shelf. Sad smiley” I said.

The reply came back: “Then you never wish it Happy Belated Father’s Day?”

“…”

A minute later, my MSN window opened again and there was the Goonfather raving:

“Ehhh… I know you gonna take a pic of the spider now, and then blog what I tell you, and call the post Stupid Goonfather!”

I smiled. “I already Plurk/Twitter about it!”

“Blah!”

LOL

[Fast forward 15 minutes...]

“Arrgh. The daddy longlegs was climbing down its thread as I was walking out of the room. I almost walked into it again!!”

“Ehh… why you never kill it??”

“I don’t like killing insects, except ants. Cos I can’t deal with the corpse.”

“Hmm… you need an undertaker.”

“My undertaker is at work now.”

Pregnant pause…

“TMD!!”

:D

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Have you voted today? =)

Vote Sheylara

Vote | View Instructions | Comment

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Suddenly, my life has no more purpose

Wed, 24 June 2009 3:27 pm

I woke up this morning feeling a sickening emptiness inside me.

Out of habit, I bounced out of bed to wash up so I could quickly have some breakfast to replenish liver glycogen.

But, as I was brushing my teeth, I found myself asking, “Why?”

I completed my California Fitness BodyAge Challenge yesterday, so there is no more reason to be obsessive over my diet anymore.

Groceries

I mean, I still recognise that a good diet is important for general well-being but, in the last two months, there was a purpose to my rigorous dieting.

I pushed myself way beyond comfort zone and was able to keep myself going with the promise of acing the challenge. (I am very inwardly competitive and derive great satisfaction from surpassing my limits.)

For the last two months, with the help of Dr Evil (my personal trainer Eric Goh), I made drastic changes to my diet and lifestyle.

  • I woke up mornings and ate breakfast.
  • I totally gave up desserts and junk food.
  • I went grocery shopping three to four times a week to ensure I was eating enough every day.
  • I started cooking my own meals.
  • I read endless nutrition articles every other day to perfect my diet.
  • I worked out at the gym twice a week and went running once a week.
  • I went to great lengths to make sure I ate the right things at the right time to maximise my workout gains.

I was even stricter on myself than Dr Evil was on me, diet-wise.

In contrast, two months ago, my lifestyle went roughly like this:

Wake up after 12 pm. First meal of the day is potato chips or salty crackers. Sometimes, first meal of the day happens after 7 pm. 80% of diet consists of fried food, junk food, soft drinks. Zero exercise.

The important thing to consider is that, even with such appalling lifestyle and diet, I was still slim and looked pretty much okay, outwardly, so there was no reason to do anything different.

But, with the California Fitness BodyAge Challenge, which measured my insides, I had to make changes to get results.

And I did make the changes and stuck to them rigidly.

Sandwich

I was even obsessive over it, but that’s how I tackle challenges and projects. I go all out and put my whole body and soul into it.

Maybe that’s my drug.

I feel a heightened sense of fulfillment from successfuly completing objectives over and beyond expectations.

There was purpose to my waking early every day. There was purpose to my eating lots of plain hard-boiled eggs and throwing all the yolks away. There was purpose to enduring the twice-weekly gym trips to torture my muscles. There was purpose to waking up at 6 am to run.

I even looked forward to every day with excitement.

Sheylara

The purpose was to get a good result for the BodyAge Challenge and also, very importantly, to not fail Dr Evil, who had dedicated his time and energy in helping me achieve my goals.

And, suddenly, now, it’s all over.

I won’t tell you my results yet because the challenge is not officially over. The other participants have yet to complete their sessions.

But it’s over for me and I feel very lost and empty.

I had a feast last night to celebrate. We had a buffet dinner at Curry Favor and I went crazy with the curries and rice and fried stuff. Even plain white rice has become a luxury for me because I haven’t been able to eat carbs after 6 pm for two months.

After that, we had the most amazing alcoholic ice cream at Udders (separate post on that to come).

Ice Cream

It was nice but, even then, the emptiness was already starting to build up within me.

There was a fear that I would wake up the next day feeling lost.

The fear was founded. I woke up today filled with dread.

After going “clean” for two months, I suddenly feel reluctant to stuff my body with salt and fats and other evil things. I feel at the same time repulsed and attracted to them.

I feel directionless. To eat or not to eat? I have the freedom to eat anything I want now and I find myself plagued with conflicting thoughts, instead.

Half

And, in fact, thinking about eating all the favourite foods I’ve been deprived of makes me feel even worse because I’d be undoing everything I’ve worked so hard for.

I realise I can still carry on with my “healthy lifestyle” and continue a clean diet (but being a lot less obsessive over it), and I will still continue an exercise routine.

But it’s not the same anymore.

There is no D-Day to look forward to. There is no prize at the finishing line. There is no Dr Evil to answer to. There is only the promise of a fitter, healthier, sexier me in the long run, but that’s not really something tangible or exciting to look forward to, so it can’t invoke the same kind of discipline.

Especially since I am already slim by nature without having to diet for it. I can eat Big Macs and fries every day and still look the same.

Sheylara

What I’m feeling now is akin to withdrawal. I was on a high of pursuing a goal intensely and now I’m crashing.

For two months, I was literally intoxicated on the excitement of reaching a goal. Now, the goal is gone, the adrenaline is gone, and I am on a total, devastating down.

I know what I’m feeling is temporary and I’ll get over it as I find new challenges and goals for myself. I get this all the time, with post-production blues.

But, in the meantime, I’m a sad little lost ghost and it’s not a good feeling.

Sheylara at the gym

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The Goonfather vs Morte

Tue, 23 June 2009 2:00 pm

My friends are killing me with their nonsense.

Since we just started our cycling/inline skating craze recently, a few people are still deciding whether to be cyclists or skaters. Minds keep changing, especially as our group gets bigger as more friends join in.

Current standing:

Factions

Right now, there’s this stupid competition going on between both factions to gain the most members, with some members resorting to tempting opposing members to switch camps.

Two nights ago, Morte linked us a whole bunch of inline skating videos. He even had specific videos for each of us.

For example:

“Minou!! Get these gear and learn! You will be like her!”

By the way, I’m totally in love with this cute little skater!

Morte even roped in a colleague who used to be a skating instructor, who’s promising us free lessons. All the better to entice the cyclists/undecided over!

Morte, by the way, is still trying to get comfortable with his skates. He can skate smoothly but he can’t go too fast, so he’s always lagging behind.

Group photo

Yesterday, the Goonfather MSN’ed me to complain.

“Alf is like poisoning my cyclists to go to his side leh.”

(Morte’s real name is Alfred.)

The Goonfather continued, “I must find a way to retain my cyclists. So, I drew a picture to remind my cyclists the outcome of skating, unless you’re damn fit.”

(During our sessions, the cyclists will usually go slow enough for the skaters to keep up. And the skaters, except Morte, go fast enough for the cyclists to be pretty comfortable.)

Here’s what the Goonfather drew:

The Goonfather's picture

I hope you can decipher it. It took me a while because I was wondering why he made the skaters look like tortoises.

It turned out he just sucks at drawing. The point was just to taunt Morte.

Unker Kell also added fuel to the fire: “I think if I run and he skate, I’ll still reach Changi before him.”

LOL.

Score one for the Goonfather’s faction, I guess.

Well, there’s a reason why our group is called Club Morte.

(But Skate Faction still wins by number!)

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Thank you everyone who has been faithfully voting every day and keeping me in the top 3 position. Thank you, thank you!

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